Most respected brands in Finland - success of service brands

It is the time of the year when the Finnish marketing and advertising magazine, Markkinointi & Mainonta (M&M) has published a list of most respected brands in Finland.

Looking into how service brands succeed and have developed over the years on this list, the clear winner of service brands is grocery store Stockmannin Herkku. According to M&M, Stockmannin Herkku rose to position 51, having no presence on the list earlier. The result is phenomenal and hopefully showcasing the positive direction and appreciation to quality development of the whole parent company Stockmann.

I have during earlier years been looking into how service brands perform on this ranking. In 2011, Google was the only service brand on the top 10. Since then, Google last year ranked 12th and this year 14th and is in the downward trend. Four years ago, the first Finnish service brand on the list was S-etukortti, ranking 14th.  S-etukortti has dropped dramatically and is now on position 71.

The top Finnish service brand therefore seems to be Yliopiston Apteekki. To me, surprisingly even Finnair does not perform that well though is is often seen as one of the Finnish icons. One of the top Finnish runner-ups is Veikkaus that has improved much from last year.

Looking at other service brands, Hilton hotel has similarly improved its position.

One interesting case is the national broadcasting company YLE. Yle has several brands on the list, such as YLE TV1, YLE, YLE Teema, YLE TV2 and YLE Radio Suomi. One could say that looking into how these brands are presented in total, YLE can be proud of its success, though YLE TV2 has one of the biggest drops on the list.

What I miss still on this list are the brands that may be ones close to Finns within their daily life. Where are brands such as Kela, Kirjasto or Vero? The (online) services for these Finnish governmental brands have developed a great deal during the past years and are even free of charge. I might also position Alko higher based on the fantastic service culture they have developed. Is it still that governmental brands are not seen as high quality? Maybe the current economic trends increase our appreciation to different service brands in the future. According to M&M, this year the success factor seemed to be high quality, combined with value.